SPACE STATION CREW DOUBLES WITH FRESH ARRIVAL - A Soyuz spacecraft carrying three crewmembers successfully joined with the International Space Station today (June 8), doubling the population of the orbiting complex to six people. The Russian-built Soyuz MS-09 docked with the space station a few minutes ahead of schedule, at 9:01 a.m. EDT (1301 GMT, 3:01 p.m. local Moscow time). The new arrivals were NASA's Serena Auñón-Chancellor, Russian cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev and European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst. More (Source: Space.com - Jun 9)
SATELLITE IMAGES SHOW DESTRUCTION CAUSED BY GUATEMALA'S FUEGO VOLCANO - The images show a town buried, nearly obliterated, by Sunday's deadly volcanic eruption in Guatemala that's claimed over 90 lives. Pyroclastic flows swallowed the rural town of San Miguel Los Lotes. These flows -- a combination of ash, rock and volcanic gases -- travel so fast during an eruption that its impossible for anything to outrun them. CNN meteorologist Ivan Cabrera says the pyroclastic flow on Sunday was over 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1,000 degrees Celsius). Now, San Miguel Los Lotes is buried in what remains of these flows. More (Source: CNN - Jun 8)
PEGASUS ROCKET, NASA SATELLITE HEAD FOR LAUNCH BASE IN PACIFIC - Slung under the belly of a specially-equipped carrier airplane, a Northrop Grumman Pegasus rocket took off Wednesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base on a two-day trek to a remote U.S. military test site in the Pacific Ocean, where crews will ready the air-dropped booster for launch of a NASA research satellite next week. The ferry flight from California to Kwajalein Atoll in the mid-Pacific Ocean will position the Pegasus rocket, its carrier jet, and support teams for final preparations for launch June 14 with NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer, or ICON, a satellite designed to probe the link between Earth’s atmosphere and space weather. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Jun 7)
ASTRONAUTS LAUNCHING TO SPACE STATION WEDNESDAY MORNING: WATCH IT LIVE - Three astronauts are launching toward the International Space Station (ISS) tomorrow morning (June 6), and you can watch their departure from Earth live. NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor, cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev and European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst are scheduled to lift off aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan tomorrow at 7:12 a.m. EDT (1112 GMT; 5:12 p.m. local Baikonur time). You can watch the launch live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV; coverage begins at 6:15 a.m. EDT (1015 GMT). More (Source: Space.com - Jun 6)
LONG MARCH 3A ROCKET LAUNCHES FENGYUN-2H METEOROLOGICAL SATELLITE - China on Tuesday launched the Fengyun-2H weather satellite, successfully inserting the near 1.4-metric-ton spacecraft into a geostationary-transfer orbit. The Long March 3A launch vehicle lifted off from Launch Complex 3 at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China at 09:07 a.m. Eastern, in accordance with airspace closure notices published days in advance. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) announced success of the launch just under an hour after liftoff. More (Source: SpaceNews - Jun 6)
DEADLY FUEGO VOLCANO ERUPTION IN GUATEMALA SPOTTED FROM SPACE - Satellites are keeping tabs on a powerful volcanic eruption in Guatemala that has killed dozens of people. Volcan de Fuego, which lies about 40 miles (70 kilometers) southwest of Guatemala City, has been simmering for years, occasionally flaring up with bouts of dramatic activity. Tragically, one such outburst occurred on Sunday (June 3). "A deadly mixture of ash, rock fragments, and hot gases rushed down ravines and stream channels on the sides of the volcano," officials with the NASA Earth Observatory wrote in a statementMonday (June 4). More (Source: Space.com - Jun 6)
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION SSTV SET TO BE ACTIVE JUNE 6–7 - The International Space Station (ISS) Amateur Radio Slow Scan Television (SSTV) system is expected to be active on 145.800 MHz FM on June 6 and 7, likely using PD-120 format. The schedule calls for transmissions on Wednesday, June 6, 1230 – 1630 UTC, and Thursday, June 7, 1150 – 1525 UTC. More (Source: ARRL - Jun 5)
NASA TO LAUNCH NEW ISS CREW THIS WEEK FOLLOWING SAFE RETURN OF 3 ASTRONAUTS - Just days after seeing the safe return of three astronauts from the International Space Station, NASA is preparing to launch a new crew to orbit Wednesday morning, June 6 from Kazakhstan. The U.S. space agency shared a photo of crews rolling the Soyuz MS-08 rocket that will send the crew to the orbiting laboratory on Wednesday to the launch pad. More (Source: MLive.com - Jun 5)
NASA GETS ITS ICON SATELLITE READY FOR LAUNCH - With a growing reliance on the global positioning system (GPS), satellites and other space-based technologies for use in everyday life on Earth, the importance of understanding the region of space where these technologies operate has also grown. Changes in space weather, such as charged-particle storms in the ionosphere, can distort satellite or GPS signals, affecting communications on many levels. This not only has implications for the military, but also for society, as self-driving cars will rely on GPS-based navigation as will modern agriculture technologies. In order to examine how the weather in space affects these technologies, scientists are looking at the connection of weather on Earth to the ionosphere. More (Source: Signal Magazine - Jun 5)
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